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Pet Snakes provides easy to understand, practical information and facts to help the new snake owner take care of their animals. At Pet Snakes we want to provide information that will help you enjoy your reptile more than ever.

The benefits of small pet snakes

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The benefits of small pet snakes are many. If you’ve ever handled a 15 foot long python it’s likely you’ve found yourself wondering just how safe it really is. The truth is that it’s a safe as you make it, but the reality is that it’s not as safe as handling a three foot snake. In this article we will take a look at the benefits of getting a small snake (those typically 5 foot and under) as a pet.

As you can see the space requirements add up quickly. Imagine having a 6 foot long cage for your Burmese python sitting in the middle of your house. That is a very large cage and many people simply don’t have the room for it.

Many times you’ll see ads on sites like Craig’s List when you are looking into adopting a pet snake and the only reason the owner is offering it is because they don’t have room for the cage in a new apartment.

They eat less food

Smaller snakes obviously have to eat much less volume of food per meal. It’s much cheaper to feed a small rat each week than to have to feed a large rabbit to your snake. Here’s the math:

If you are feeding once a week it will cost 18.00 to feed a snake 4 small rabbits, but only $3.46 to feed 4 medium sized rats. Over the course of a year if you were to feed just small rabbits you’d spend over $200 (18*12). Feeding with rats would come out to $41.52 over 12 months (3.46*12)

They are safer to handle

Even a six or seven foot snake can overwhelm many people. A rule of thumb when it comes to large snakes is that you need a person for every two feet of length over six feet. Finding people to help you with that is easier said than done especially once they get thrashed around by a large snake a few times.

By no means is this meant to say that you shouldn’t get a large snake. It’s to give you some insight into a few things you should think about before you go pick up that baby Reticulated Python from the pet store that is on sale for $75. That baby will get large, very large in fact and it’s better to know ahead of time what you are getting into before you get into it.

I always tell people who ask me about large snakes to find a full grown adult snake in your area and handle it. Actually work with it a little bit and you’ll very quickly see how much work it really is. Even if the snake is totally docile just moving it around to clean its tank can be a huge chore.